Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Of course, most of what's left out in the
monstres
is unusable rubbish, that's pretty much a
given if Natalie or the Romani can't make anything of it, and so the majority of what's left is
collected up to be deposited in, hopefully, the right skip at the
déchetterie
. There is the third
option though, the
brocante
.
There is this romantic notion of a French street
brocante
, perhaps fed by the endless
Bargain
Hunt
-type programmes that used to be afternoon television fillers but which now seem to
pass as acceptable prime-time viewing, and the notion is that you can literally make your
fortune by browsing through other people's tat. I think it's very unlikely indeed. It may have
been the case a few years ago that what was fashionable in the interior design world of Britain
was coincidentally exactly the kind of stuff that the French were throwing out, but largely
those days have gone or, as seems more likely, the French have cottoned on to the real value
of what they have and price things accordingly. Now, there are
brocantes antiquités
which
are the expensive higher-end markets; there are the
brocantes
themselves, where you may
find a bargain; and there are the
vide-greniers
, literally 'loft-empties', and to my mind horrific
places just full of tat, basically a
déchetterie
without the order.
When the idea of having a stall at the local annual
brocante
was first suggested I made my
opposition to the idea perfectly clear. It's a waste of time, I said to Natalie, and I knew this
from experience. It's a long day, I said, where we sell nothing and you and the boys spend the
time buying from other stalls, leaving me minding the shop and 'haggling' with old women
over the cost of shabby, discarded doilies and broken breadbins. It's undignified, tiring and
fruitless, I stressed, and we are not doing it. I felt strongly about this and also thought that,
just this once, maybe putting my foot down would have some effect. I was pleased with my
reasoned argument and eloquence. That's that idea crushed, I thought naively; no
brocante
for us…
Six o'clock on a Sunday morning is no time to be setting up a trestle table covered in broken
stuff, not that there's ever really a good time. The initial idea had been that just Natalie and
Maurice would do the setting up and that Samuel, Thérence and me would turn up later; it
didn't happen like that. Maurice was understandably nervous at having to fend off early morn-
ing crap-scavengers while Natalie parked the car and dawdled her way back to the stall, so
I was roped in to act in a security role while Maurice sorted the stuff out. As it was, Natalie
disappeared with the car and Maurice fell asleep under the table, leaving me to deal with the
kind of people normally found passing off car stereos in pubs or loitering by people's bins.
'How much for the…?'
'I haven't bloody unpacked yet!' was typical of some early exchanges, me not being particu-
larly suited to the early Sunday morning, sell your own 'tat' combination.
Eventually Natalie returned - with a lampshade. Brilliant, I thought, we haven't sold any-
thing yet and already she's bought stuff; this early into the game and we're already one-nil
down, this could be a hammering. I left her to it and promised to return later with Samuel
